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"And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth....[Apocalypse (Revelation) 8:13]

Saturday, July 22, 2017

July 22 – The Siege of Belgrade (1456)

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed
II was rallying his resources in order to subjugate the Kingdom of
Hungary. His immediate objective was the border fort of the town of
Belgrade (in old Hungarian Nándorfehérvár). John Hunyadi, a Hungarian
nobleman and warlord, who had fought many battles against the Ottomans
in the previous two decades, prepared the defense of the fortress.
The siege eventually escalated into a major battle, during which
Hunyadi led a sudden counterattack that overran the Ottoman camp,
ultimately compelling the wounded Sultan Mehmed II to lift the siege and
retreat. The battle had significant consequences, as it stabilized the
southern frontiers of the Kingdom of Hungary for more than half a
century and thus considerably delayed the expansion of the Ottoman
Empire.

The Pope celebrated the victory as well, and he previously ordered
all Catholic kingdoms to pray for the victory of the defenders of
Belgrade. This led to the noon bell ritual that is still undertaken in
Catholic churches to this day.
Since 2011, the date 22nd of July, when Christian forces led by John
Hunyadi defeated the Ottoman Turks besieging Belgrade in 1456, is a
national memorial day in Hungary.

Portrait of Mehmed II by Venetian artist Gentile Bellini

Preparations

At the end of 1455, after a public reconciliation with all his
enemies, Hunyadi began preparations. At his own expense, he provisioned
and armed the fortress. Leaving in it a strong garrison under the
command of his brother-in-law Mihály Szilágyi and his own eldest son
László. Hunyadi then proceeded to form a relief army and an additional
fleet of two hundred corvettes. The barons fearing Hunyadi’s growing
power more than the Ottoman threat, leaving Hunyadi entirely to his own
resources.
A Franciscan friar allied with Hunyadi, Giovanni da Capistrano,
preached a crusade to attract peasants and yeomanry to Hunyadi’s cause.
The recruits were ill-armed (many with only slings and scythes) but full
of enthusiasm. The recruits flocked to the standard of Hunyadi, the
core of which consisted of a small band of seasoned mercenaries and a
few banderia of noble horsemen. All in all, Hunyadi managed to build a
force of 25–30,000 men.

Siege

However, before these forces could be assembled, Mehmed II’s invasion
army (160,000 men in early accounts, 60-70,000 according to newer
research) arrived at Belgrade. On July 4, 1456, the siege began.
Szilágyi could rely on a force of only 5,000-7,000 men in the castle.
Mehmed set up his siege on the neck of the headland and started firing
on the walls on June 29. He arrayed his men in three sections. The
Rumelian (that is, European) corps had the majority of his 300 cannons,
and his fleet of 200 or so river vessels had the rest. The Rumelians
were arrayed on the right wing and the Anatolian corps was arrayed on
the left. In the middle were the sultan’s personal guards, the
janissaries, and his command post. The Anatolian corps and the
janissaries were both heavy infantry troops. Mehmed posted his river
vessels mainly to the northwest of the city to patrol the marshes and
ensure that the fortress was not reinforced. They also kept an eye on
the Sava to the southwest to avoid the infantry’s being outflanked by
Hunyadi’s army. The Danube to the east was guarded by the spahi, the
sultan’s light cavalry corps, to avoid being outflanked on the right.

St. John in the middle of the Battle

When word of this reached Hunyadi, he was in the south of Hungary
recruiting additional light cavalry troops for the army with which he
intended to lift the siege. Although relatively few of his fellow nobles
had were willing to provide manpower, the peasants were more than
willing to do so. Cardinal Giovanni Capistrano had been sent to Hungary
by the Vatican both to preach against heretics, such as Greek Orthodox
Christians, and to preach the Crusade against the Ottomans. Capistrano
managed to raise a large, albeit poorly trained and equipped, peasant
army, with which he left for Belgrade. Capistrano and Hunyadi traveled
together, but commanded separately. Between the two of them, they had
roughly 40,000-50,000 men.
The outnumbered defenders relied mainly on the strength of the
formidable castle of Belgrade which was at the time one of the best
engineered in the Balkans. As Belgrade was designated to be the capital
of the Serbian Despotate by Despot Stefan Lazarević. Ottoman raids were
expected after they recovered from the heavy loss against the Mongols.
Utilising advanced building techniques from Byzantine and Arab fortress
designs from the period of Seljuk and Ottoman military conflicts of the
mid-11th century.
The castle was designed in an elaborate form with three lines of
defense: the inner castle with the palace and huge Donjon, the upper
town with the main military camps with four gates and a double wall. as
well as the lower town with the cathedral in the urban center and a port
at the Danube. This building endeavor was one of the most elaborate
military architecture achievements of the Middle Ages. After the Siege,
the Hungarians reinforced the north and eastern side with an additional
gate and several towers, one of which, the Nebojsa tower, was designed
for artillery purposes.

John Hunyadi

On July 14, 1456, Hunyadi arrived to the completely encircled city
with his flotilla on the Danube while the Ottoman navy lay astride the
Danube River. He broke the naval blockade on July 14, sinking three
large Ottoman galleys and capturing four large vessels and 20 smaller
ones. By destroying the Sultan’s fleet, Hunyadi was able to transport
his troops and much-needed food into the city. The fort’s defense was
also reinforced.
But Mehmed II was not willing to end the siege and after a week of
heavy artillery bombardment, the walls of the fortress were breached in
several places. On July 21 Mehmed II ordered an all-out assault which
began at sundown and continued all night. The besieging army flooded the
city, and then started its assault on the fort. As this was the most
crucial moment of the siege, Hunyadi ordered the defenders to throw
tarred wood, and other flammable material, and then set it afire. Soon a
wall of flames separated the Janissaries fighting in the city from
their comrades trying to breach through the gaps into the upper town.
The fierce battle between the encircled Janissaries and Szilágyi’s
soldiers inside the upper town was turning in favour of the Christians
and the Hungarians managed to beat off the fierce assault from outside
the walls. The Janissaries remaining inside the city were thus massacred
while the Ottoman troops trying to breach the upper town suffered heavy
losses. When an Ottoman soldier almost managed to plant the Sultan’s
flag on top of a bastion, a Hungarian knight named Titus Dugović
(Dugovics Titusz in Hungarian) grabbed him and together they plunged
from the wall. However, according to historians the name “Titus Dugović”
is fictitious because it derives from falsified records.

Battle of Belgrade

Battle

The next day something unexpected happened. By some accounts, the
peasant crusaders started a spontaneous action, and forced Capistrano
and Hunyadi to make use of the situation. Despite Hunyadi’s orders to
the defenders not to try to loot the Ottoman positions, some of the
units crept out from demolished ramparts, took up positions across from
the Ottoman line, and began harassing enemy soldiers. Ottoman spahis
(provincial cavalry) tried without success to disperse the harassing
force. At once, more Christians joined those outside the wall. What
began as an isolated incident quickly escalated into a full-scale
battle.
John of Capistrano at first tried to order his men back inside the
walls, but soon found himself surrounded by about 2,000 Crusaders. He
then began leading them toward the Ottoman lines, crying, “The Lord who
made the beginning will take care of the finish!”
Capistrano led his crusaders to the Ottoman rear across the Sava
river. At the same time, Hunyadi started a desperate charge out of the
fort to take the cannon positions in the Ottoman camp.

Part of Belgrade Fortress from the 17th century.

Taken by surprise at this strange turn of events and, some
chroniclers say, paralyzed by some inexplicable fear, the Ottomans took
flight. The Sultan’s bodyguard of about 5,000 Janissaries tried
desperately to stop the panic and recapture the camp, but by that time
Hunyadi’s army had also joined the unplanned battle, and the Ottoman
efforts became hopeless. The Sultan himself advanced into the fight and
killed a knight in single combat, but then took an arrow in the thigh
and was rendered unconscious. After the battle, the Hungarian raiders
were ordered to spend the night behind the walls of the fortress and to
be on the alert for a possible renewal of the battle, but the Ottoman
counterattack never came.
Under cover of darkness the Ottomans retreated in haste, bearing their wounded in 140 wagons. They withdrew to Constantinople.

Turkish miniature of the siege of Belgrade 1456

Aftermath

However, the Hungarians payed dearly for this victory. Plague broke
out in the camp, from which John Hunyadi himself died three weeks later
(August 11, 1456). He was buried in the Cathedral of Gyulafehérvár (now
Alba Iulia), the capital of Transylvania.
As the design of the fortress had proved its merits during the siege,
some additional reinforcements were made by the Hungarians. The weaker
eastern walls, where the Ottomans broke through into the upper town were
reinforced by the Zindan gate and the Heavy Nebojsa tower. This was the
last of the great modifications to the fortress until 1521 when Sultan
Süleyman eventually captured it.

Noon Bell

Pope Callixtus III

Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every European church to be
rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for the
defenders of the city. The practice of the noon bell is traditionally
attributed to the international commemoration of the victory at Belgrade
and to the order of Pope Callixtus III, since in many countries (like
England and the Spanish Kingdoms) news of the victory arrived before the
order, and the ringing of the church bells at noon was thus transformed
into a commemoration of the victory. The Pope didn’t withdraw the
order, and Catholic churches still ring the noon bell to this day.
In the history of Oxford University, the victory was welcomed with a
peals of bells and great celebrations in England too. Hunyadi sent a
special courier (among others), Erasmus Fullar, to Oxford with the news
of the victory.

Stone
in the Kalemegdan park, in Belgrade, with engraved inscription on the
place where Catholic forces under command of Yanosh Huniady won the
battle against the Turks in the year 1456.

Follow Up

The victory stopped the Ottoman advance towards Catholic Europe for
70 years, though they made other incursions such as the taking of
Otranto in 1480–1481 and the raid of Croatia and Styria in 1493.
Belgrade would continue to protect Hungary from Ottoman attacks until
the fort fell to the Ottomans in 1521.
After the Siege of Belgrade stopped the advance of Mehmed II towards
Central Europe, Serbia and Bosnia were absorbed into the Empire.
Wallachia, the Tartar Khanate of Crimea, and eventually Moldavia were
merely converted into vassal states thanks to strong military resistance
to Mehmed’s attempts at conquest. There were several reasons why the
sultan did not directly attack Hungary and why he gave up the idea of
advancing in that direction after his unsuccessful siege of Belgrade.
The mishap at Belgrade indicated that the Empire could not expand
further until Serbia and Bosnia were transformed into a secure base of
operations. Furthermore, the significant political and military power of
Hungary under Matthias Corvinus no doubt had something to do with this
hesitation. Mehmed was also distracted by resistance from two
semi-independent vassals to the north of the Danube, over whom he was
attempting to exercise greater authority.
While Hunyadi’s victory at Belgrade and the lasting legacy of his
political decisions (Vlad III the Impaler and Stephen III both came to
power under Hunyadi, and he went to great lengths to have his son
Matthias placed on the throne) rendered the daunting Mehmed II far less
of a threat to Christendom, his ultimate dream of a Christian reconquest
of Constantinople would never be realized. Hunyadi had chosen to stay
out of the Siege of Constantinople because he was militarily unprepared
to fight Mehmed’s mighty army at the time, and instead opted to protect
Hungary and fortify the Balkans. Matthias did not share the concept of a
great war against the Ottomans and was too embroiled in political
disputes with the Holy Roman Empire to his West to be the aggressive
warrior his father was, so his role was limited mostly to defending his
own territory and letting the Balkan leaders bear the brunt of the
struggle against the Ottoman Empire.
While fierce resistance and Hunyadi’s effective leadership ensured
that the daring and ambitious Mehmed the Conqueror would only get as far
into Europe as the Balkans, the sultan had already managed to transform
the Ottoman Empire into what would be one of the most feared powers in
Europe (as well as Asia) for centuries. Most of Hungary was eventually
conquered in 1526 at the Battle of Mohács. Ottoman expansion into Europe
continued with menacing success until the Siege of Vienna in 1529, and
Ottoman power in Europe remained strong and still threatening to Central
Europe at times until the Battle of Vienna in 1683.Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 404

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St. Bernard:

Go forth confidently then, you knights, and repel the foes of the cross of Christ with a stalwart heart. Know that neither death nor life can separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, and in every peril repeat, "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!

How secure, I say, is life when death is anticipated without fear; or rather when it is desired with feeling and embraced with reverence! How holy and secure this knighthood and how entirely free of the double risk run by those men who fight not for Christ! Whenever you go forth, O worldly warrior, you must fear lest the bodily death of your foe should mean your own spiritual death, or lest perhaps your body and soul together should be slain by him.

Indeed, danger or victory for a Christian depends on the dispositions of his heart and not on the fortunes of war. If he fights for a good reason, the issue of his fight can never be evil; and likewise the results can never be considered good if the reason were evil and the intentions perverse. If you happen to be killed while you are seeking only to kill another, you die a murderer. If you succeed, and by your will to overcome and to conquer you perchance kill a man, you live a murderer. Now it will not do to be a murderer, living or dead, victorious or vanquished. What an unhappy victory--to have conquered a man while yielding to vice, and to indulge in an empty glory at his fall when wrath and pride have gotten the better of you!

But what of those who kill neither in the heat of revenge nor in the swelling of pride, but simply in order to save themselves? Even this sort of victory I would not call good, since bodily death is really a lesser evil than spiritual death. The soul need not die when the body does. No, it is the soul which sins that shall die.

The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port.

Once he finds himself in the thick of battle, this knight sets aside his previous gentleness, as if to say, "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord; am I not disgusted with your enemies?" These men at once fall violently upon the foe, regarding them as so many sheep. No matter how outnumbered they are, they never regard these as fierce barbarians or as awe-inspiring hordes. Nor do they presume on their own strength, but trust in the Lord of armies to grant them the victory.

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Saint Athanasius

"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith?The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ..."You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. "Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."